SAMMY GOING SOUTH

Synopsis

Sammy, aged ten, is orphaned in an air raid at Port Said during Suez. He sets out alone with a toy compass to find his only relative, Aunt Jane, in Durban. After encounters with a Syrian pedlar, a rich American tourist and her guide from whom he escapes, Sammy meets Cocky, an old diamond smuggler. The police, alerted by the guide about Sammy, capture Cocky but Sammy escapes. Aunt Jane comes to police headquarters to find out about Sammy and is told by Cocky that she must let him finish his journey…

Sammy, aged ten, is orphaned in an air raid at Port Said during Suez. He sets out alone with a toy compass to find his only relative, Aunt Jane, in Durban. After encounters with a Syrian pedlar, a rich American tourist and her guide from whom he escapes, Sammy meets Cocky, an old diamond smuggler. The police, alerted by the guide about Sammy, capture Cocky but Sammy escapes. Aunt Jane comes to police headquarters to find out about Sammy and is told by Cocky that she must let him finish his journey alone. When finally Sammy reaches Durban she is there to welcome him.

Context

Based on a 1961 novel by W.H. Canaway, and filmed over 1962, Sammy Going South narrates the adventures of a boy orphaned during the Suez crisis and surveys his journey through various parts of Britain’s dissolving African Empire in the months that follow. Egypt’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal led to Britain taking military action in late October 1956 with French and Israeli forces. But under financial and political pressure, and with little support from the…

Based on a 1961 novel by W.H. Canaway, and filmed over 1962, Sammy Going South narrates the adventures of a boy orphaned during the Suez crisis and surveys his journey through various parts of Britain’s dissolving African Empire in the months that follow. Egypt’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal led to Britain taking military action in late October 1956 with French and Israeli forces. But under financial and political pressure, and with little support from the American administration, the Prime Minister Anthony Eden announced a ceasefire on 6 November. The withdrawal marked the weakening of Britain as an international power and arguably increased the speed of decolonisation. The countries that Sammy visits in his journey across Africa had already gained independence or were soon to do so. The Sudan had achieved independence from Britain and Egypt on 1 January 1956 and the East African colonies – Uganda, Tanganyika and Kenya – followed in the early sixties. South Africa – where Sammy’s journey ends – had been a dominion since 1910.

The film was produced by Bryanston Films which was chaired by Michael Balcon after the end of Ealing Studios. Bryanston’s most successful ventures had been as backers for Woodfall Films’ small budgeted, but popular Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), A Taste of Honey (1961) and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962). With its adventurous elements and exotic locations, Sammy Going South was Bryanston’s attempt to step up the budget and a Hollywood film company, Seven Arts, came in as co-producers. The director, Alexander Mackendrick, had been a key figure at Ealing Studios directing Whisky Galore! (1949), TheMan in the White Suit (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955), as well as the childhood drama, Mandy (1952). But it had been seven years since Mackendrick had made a film – the acerbic Sweet Smell of Success (1957) – having left two major feature films in the interim. Mackendrick wasn’t Balcon’s first choice, but the director completed the film despite a disabling back condition, two near-deaths of crew who’d been bitten by snakes, and Edward G. Robinson – the film’s only star in an expanded role as Cocky Wainwright – suffering a heart attack.

Difficulties on-set were mirrored in post-production where Balcon and Mackendrick clashed over the type of story they were telling. A sequence was excised that showed Sammy brutally smashing crabs with small stones, in a recreation of the Suez bombing that killed his parents. Mackendrick’s depiction of the boy’s internal problems was too dark for Balcon’s adventure story and this uneasy mix seemed to be the basis for much of the criticism of the film; some complaining that the film was too dull at the start, others that Sammy’s internal conflicts were not developed enough. (Walker; Cameron)

The film was selected as the Royal Film Performance of 1963, premiering on 18 March before a general release in April. It didn’t fare well at the box office and was cut down to 88 minutes for the American release in January 1965 under the title A Boy Ten Feet Tall. With a big budget invested in Sammy Going South, Bryanston wasn’t able to fully commit to Woodfall’s next production – Tom Jones (1963) – which found backing with United Artists. That film was a huge international success and would have saved Bryanston had they invested. The company was wound up in 1965.

Analysis

A British film that uses the events of a disastrous military campaign to orphan its lead character, then traces his journey through former British colonies as they approach independence, Sammy Going South seems to offer itself as a key contemporary text that addresses a humiliated post-Suez British Empire. Yet despite the darkness of the source novel by W.H. Canaway, and the directorial ambitions of Alexander Mackendrick – an intelligent director well versed in presenting…

A British film that uses the events of a disastrous military campaign to orphan its lead character, then traces his journey through former British colonies as they approach independence, Sammy Going South seems to offer itself as a key contemporary text that addresses a humiliated post-Suez British Empire. Yet despite the darkness of the source novel by W.H. Canaway, and the directorial ambitions of Alexander Mackendrick – an intelligent director well versed in presenting the underside of the British and their exploits – the film never quite shakes off the ‘Boy’s Own Paper’ tropes which initially attracted Sir Michael Balcon – producing his last film – to take on the project as a big budgeted adventure. His influence, including choices over controversial censor cuts, and the film’s selection as the Royal Film Performance of 1963 are testament to the mainstream influence that initially nurtured, but ultimately neutered, most of the critical elements implicit in the story.

Although working well together, Balcon was not intending to revisit Mackendrick’s former Ealing successes with Sammy Going South. Indeed, the film has more in common with Ealing’s unashamed African adventure Where No Vultures Fly (the most popular British film of 1951 and that year’s Royal Film Performance) than it does other Mackendrick films. Midway through the film, we see a montage of various wild animals in and around Sammy’s barge as he sails down the White Nile. The Kuleshov effect of matching Sammy against shots of wildebeest, elephants, crocodiles and hippos is a cliché of the genre found in the worst of the exploitation adventure films, yet finds a place here. Moreover, despite his benevolent personality, the film’s main adult character – played by its star, Edward G. Robinson – happens to be an illegal diamond smuggler, pillaging the land and making a fortune. ‘This is the land that God forgot,’ he states, ‘and only Cocky remembered.’ Cocky is punished at the end of the film but not before instilling in Sammy a shared sense that they are both men of Africa. Sammy’s journey across the soon-to-be former British colonies is of less relevance to the film’s story than their role as territories through which Sammy learns to become a man. Orlando Martins – playing the only significant African part as Abu Lubaba, a Sudanese haji – endorses this view, telling Sammy that ‘man’s life is a journey.’

Mackendrick does explore the issue of Sammy’s guilt. One of the bonding moments between Cocky and Sammy occurs when the boy reveals his trauma at causing an accident that led to the fatal wounding of a crooked Syrian peddler. We see the scene earlier in the film and the Syrian is depicted as corrupt and a potential rapist. The accident and Sammy’s later theft of the dead Syrian’s wallet, though not depicted as an implicit punishment of the man’s sins, nevertheless leaves the viewer with little sympathy for him. Again it is the narrative of Sammy’s trauma which is the the scene’s focus. Although metaphorically suggesting some kind of implicit British guilt at recklessly abandoning the African territories and their people, Sammy’s guilt is explained as a deferred reaction to the death of his parents and forms part of his evolution into a man. Moreover, Sammy feels no such guilt for his later selfish thoughtlessness (almost forgetting to thank Abu) or malicious actions (abandoning and imparing the survival of tourist guide, Spyros Dracondopolous, lost in the wildest African bush and suffering severe dysentery).

The relationship between Cocky and Sammy is at the heart of Sammy Going South, but the figures that populate the rest of the film are mere ciphers in Sammy’s episodic development. As Philip Kemp points out, Mackendrick’s depiction of Sammy’s naïvely cruel moments carry with them an ‘unpalatable hint of racial condescension’ (Kemp p.183)

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